In addition to Sion House Isleworth still owns a few historic mansions, including Gumley House, named after a seventeenth-century owner; Shrewsbury House, once the home of Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury, both now convent schools; and Kendal House, long a noted place of entertainment, the last some little distance from the river, on the road to Twickenham. The church, said to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, though his plans were modified to save expense, is finely situated on a terrace looking down upon the Thames, and a wooded islet, presenting quite a picturesque appearance, especially when barges and other craft are waiting to be taken up or down stream by the tide. A little above Isleworth is the half-lock that has added so greatly to the usefulness of the upper river as a highway of traffic, and also to the healthiness of the districts on either side by keeping the mud constantly under water. Looking down upon it on the Middlesex side is the somewhat uninteresting suburb of St. Margaret's, occupying the site of the seat of the Marquis of Ailsa; and a little higher up stream is the beautiful park called Marble Hill, after the mansion still standing on it, that was bought in 1903 for the use of the public by the London {285} County Council, aided by many private subscribers, including Sir Max Waechter, already mentioned in connection with the purchase of Petersham Ait. Marble Hill mansion is supposed to have been built in 1723 by Mrs. Howard, one of Queen Caroline's ladies-in-waiting, later Countess of Suffolk, after the designs of Lord Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, on a portion of the grounds of the neighbouring Orleans House, half the expense having been borne by George II. when he was still Prince of Wales. In laying out the grounds the owner had the benefit of the advice of Pope, then living at Twickenham, and also of Dean Swift, at that time in the service of Sir William Temple at Sheen, who is said to have prophesied that Mrs. Howard would certainly be ruined by her lavish outlay. That she was not is proved by the fact that she died at Marble Hill, leaving a fortune behind her; and later her old home was occupied by Mrs. Fitzherbert, who is said by some authorities to have been married in it to the Prince of Wales, later George IV., though others assert that the ceremony took place in her house in Park Lane. However that may be, she was certainly at her riverside home in 1795 when the wedding of her lover with the Princess Caroline of Brunswick took place, and she there held a little court of those loyal friends who believed in the legality of her union to the king. [Illustration: ISLEWORTH]